PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Jun Takatoh
AU  - Jae Hong Park
AU  - Jinghao Lu
AU  - Shun Li
AU  - P. M. Thompson
AU  - Bao-Xia Han
AU  - Shengli Zhao
AU  - David Kleinfeld
AU  - Beth Friedman
AU  - Fan Wang
TI  - Constructing An Adult Orofacial Premotor Atlas In Allen Mouse CCF
AID  - 10.1101/2021.02.18.431923
DP  - 2021 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2021.02.18.431923
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/02/19/2021.02.18.431923.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/02/19/2021.02.18.431923.full
AB  - Premotor circuits in the brainstem control pools of orofacial motoneurons to execute essential functions such as drinking, eating, breathing, and in rodent, whisking. Previous transsynaptic tracing studies only mapped orofacial premotor circuits in neonatal mice but the adult circuits remain unknown due to technical difficulties. Here we developed a three-step monosynaptic transsynaptic tracing strategy to identify premotor neurons controlling whisker, tongue protrusion, and jaw-closing muscles in the adult. We registered these different groups of premotor neurons onto the Allen mouse brain common coordinate framework (CCF) and consequently generated a combined 3D orofacial premotor atlas, revealing unique spatial organizations of distinct premotor circuits. We also uncovered premotor neurons simultaneously innervating multiple motor nuclei and, thus, likely coordinating different muscles involved in the same orofacial behaviors. Our method for tracing adult premotor circuits and registering to Allen CCF is generally applicable and should facilitate the investigations of motor controls of diverse behaviors.